Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday July 16, 2012 @03:18PM
from the brand-spanking-new dept.

hypnosec writes "Developers of iOS apps have been blessed with another update to iOS 6 around 21 days after an update of the iOS 5 successor was doled out and it contains quite a few new features. The 3rd update, dubbed iOS 6 Beta 3, can now be applied to the existing iOS on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and full downloads are available from Apple's developer portal. MacRumours notes that this update doesn't come with any change list and developers seeing the over the air update get the message that iOS 6 Beta 3 contains some 'bug fixes and improvement.' The latest build contains new options under the Settings application for Apple's latest Maps software. The beta allows developers to customize certain aspects like the volume of turn-by-turn navigation, and whether to measure distances in miles or kilometers, notes Apple Insider."

Research and Development Expense (“R&D”)R&D expense increased $260 million or 45% to $841 million during the second quarter of 2012 compared to the same period of 2011 and increased $443 million or 38% to $1.6 billion during the first six months of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011. These increases were due primarily to an increase in headcount and related expenses to support expanded R&D activities.

iOS has always been a fully preemptive multitasking operating system. It's just whether the app has permission to run as such and Apple have some very stringent requirements to ensure a good user experience and acceptable battery life. There are no technical reasons why iOS should not be considered to not be a multitasking OS. For example, if your app plays music, it can continue to do everything whilst running in the background. Of course, if you do too much non music playback related stuff apple may not accept your app in the AppStore.

Any process sent to the background has the kernel's sword of damocles hanging over it at all times - it can be killed instantly and without warning if android decides it needs the resources. That's not "for real" multitasking in my book.

I learned recently that the Linux kernel does this, too. If it's pretty much completely out of memory, it will kill a process to get some memory back. As noted above, the alternative is for the kernel to just crash.